Euthyphro dilemma: metaphysical or epistemological?

[Note: follow-up posting here.]

As I read about the topic of the meaning of life at the SEP entry (and in connection with thinking about Tolstoy/Schopenhauer on "the problem of boredom," which may be either the biggest roadblock to better living through philosophy or a book by that name, or the biggest launching-board to such...), the Euthyphro dilemma pops up again.  It's probably been hashed over plenty already, but here's how I conceive the issue:

(1) The 'metaphysical' problem: What grounds goodness (in the context of Divine Command theory)?

(2) The 'epistemological' problem: Assuming that divine command grounds goodness, how do we know what the good is?

The dilemma as typically posed seems to address the 'metaphysical' problem as stated above, but isn't it really addressing the 'epistemological' one?

To explain: The 'metaphysical' problem tends to be concerned with whether God's command alone suffices to ground goodness, or whether God bases commands on some independent standard of goodness, which presumably would itself suffice to ground goodness.  Assuming the latter, does God's explanatory role in this fall afoul of Ockham's Razor?  (I think it does.)  But a Divine Command theorist might still come back and say that God is a perfectly good being (which runs into another problem - I'll call it the Problem of Morally Pointless Suffering - e.g., animal suffering) who creates the world, its laws, and human nature, that last being crucial in grounding human goodness.  Without this Creator, there would be no goodness at all (or evil, or anything at all, for that matter).

What I don't see is how or where this metaphysical grounding of goodness, even if true, answers what I think is the real concern raised by the Euthyphro dilemma, which can be stated in perhaps multiple ways, but perhaps most importantly: How do we discover what it is that God commands, i.e., how do we discover goodness?  For the typical philosopher, simply pointing to some holy book where X is prescribed, or simply claiming as a matter of faith that God commands X, isn't going to cut it.  There's too much disagreement on the contents of these putative commands.

(Does God command that there be a welfare state, or laissez-faire?  And when there is a commandment, "thou shalt not kill," how does that get interpreted and applied?  If we specify that only innocents shall not be killed, then what about killing human shields in wartime, something that many a Southern evangelical finds acceptable while declaring with utmost confidence that even a "morning after pill" is murder?  One might consider how/why they've not had much luck persuading the skeptical of the latter claim.  [On a related, blatantly political note: I hear quite a bit from evangelical types about how Trump was sent by God to "save America."  So how did God allow America to be put in the position of requiring saving in the first place - I'll gladly liken the academic left and its spawn to a cancer that (supposedly?) God both inflicts and then sometimes cures people of - and why Trump of all people?  Lord working in mysterious ways, as usual?  And are the dialectical 'antipodes' of the academic left and the evangelical right in America's best interests?])

What we really want to know is, regardless of how goodness comes about in a metaphysical account, how we determine what's good or not.  In other words, we are tasked with the hard epistemic work of sorting through competing moral claims, something that divine command theorists qua such (i.e., in that capacity, where some theory is appealed to as an account of their ordinary folk-wisdom moral judgments, which are usually quite reliable across a great range of cases [excluding political questions...]) don't seem to be up to doing, which is an acute cause of philosophers' frustration when it comes to people not doing hard epistemic work to support their opinions.  Of course, the Euthyphro dilemma is one way for the philosophers' frustration to be sublimated and the ball put in the court of the epistemically lazy.

(It could also be that the hard epistemic work that philosophers seek to do is too overwhelming for so many "mere" possessors of folk-wisdom; that I can understand.  Perhaps "God commands X" is shorthand more or less for "There is moral truth and it comes from somewhere even if we don't know where, but if there is a God then the morally true is of course what such a being would command."  [The question of ultimate justice in an afterlife, or a setting-right beyond this world of animal suffering in this world, is a further question requiring hard epistemic work if we really want credible answers; all that I can see at this point is that such ultimate justice or setting-right makes a perfectly good-and-powerful God consistent with morally pointless animal suffering, but the morally pointless suffering seems to be consistent with there being no God, as well.])

Another consideration, related surely with the "meaning of life" issue althougly less clearly or directly so with Euthyphro problems: As far as we know, this world and this life is all there is.  The likes of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche seem quite ready to take the implications of this head-on, wherever the argument leads (even if it leads in a very dark or terrible direction, as clearly the case with Schopenhauer).  Do all that many theists have a back-up plan for what to do/think about this life just in case it turns out they don't have a good reason for belief in an afterlife?  (Also: does the question of meaning reduce to the question of reasons, i.e.: What is the reason for life/living; and how does the principle of sufficient reason enter into this?)  And aren't the standard practices of philosophy, as overwhelming as they might end up being to some or at some times, a gateway to better thinking about or formation of such a back-up plan?  Alternatively, if we do indeed have access to ethical and other knowledge independent of our (non-)beliefs about a Creator, does such (non-)belief make any actual difference to how folks tend to lead their lives?

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A couple newly discovered blogs that look interesting (what took so long?...):
https://reasonandmeaning.com/
https://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/

Make Presidents Great Again

or: What Would Marcus Aurelius Tweet?

The first four presidents of the United States - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison - were philosophical people.  They loved, cherished, and pursued (and may even have attained to some extent) wisdom.  (The American Philosophical Society [APS] of which they were members was co-founded by Ben Franklin; let's call the aforementioned the Big Five of the American Founding.)  It's not a stretch to say that had America's founding generation not been of the intellectual and moral caliber that they were - had they not been the sort of people who would found or become members of a philosophical society - America probably wouldn't be the great nation it has been.

Unfortunately, their legacy has been squandered, to the point that we have the shitshow of today.  Having an uncouth, unread man as president - elected mainly on the promise of taking on the (intellectually bankrupt and therefore) corrupt swamp that is D.C. - is but a symptom of the problem (that swamp being the bigger one).

Trump tweets out this demonstrably ignorant troll-post earlier today.  The Democrats, who've cried racism umpteen times before, are reeled in yet again; they just can't help themselves and perhaps Trump knows this is how they would react.  (It's so predictable at this point.  Call a shithole country a shithole country, and that's immediately, automatically, incontrovertibly racist and you'd better go along with that instant determination, you deplorable white-supremacy enabler, you.)  This, right after the Dems had an intra-party, short-attention-span news-cycle rift when AOC pulled the race card on the race-card-pulling Nancy Peloser; obviously, they refuse to learn a fucking thing.

This is a shitshow stuff, not a rational and intelligent conversation.

So to get down to the essential/fundamental issue here:

Trump doesn't need to be a Marcus Aurelius to govern wisely.  Aurelius is so unique a historical figure as to be well-known (among those with a clue, i.e., not shitshow-participants...) as both a statesman and a philosopher.  His Meditations are considered to be important and significant contributions to the Western philosophical canon, an accomplishment not known among any other statesman I can think of.  The likes of Jefferson (who served as president of the United States at the same time he served as president of the APS) were indeed philosopher-statesmen, just not known to be significant contributors to the philosophical canon.  The natural-rights doctrine Jefferson was drawing on for the Declaration of Independence originates with John Locke, a top-10-ish Western-canon philosopher.

Nor, given the specializations involved, should we expect a statesman to be a significant contributor to the philosophical canon.  But we have good reason to expect that a statesman should be wise and wisdom-loving.  Whatever his strengths, Trump doesn't show himself to be this, not in any consistent or integrated sense.  Instead of troll-tweeting at 4 a.m., how about he spend 10-15 minutes actually reading from the Meditations and learn a thing or two about wise governance and living.  He says time and time again he knows more about X than the years-long experts in X know - an implausible claim on its face given the necessary time invested for specialized expertise.  It's demonstrably implausible when he says and tweets out things that neither a Jefferson nor a Marcus Aurelius would say/tweet.  (Checkmate, Trump?)

The linked leads are all over this blog for how America (and the rest of the world for that matter) can be transformed to unprecedented greatness via philosophical education, beginning at a young age.  I'm tired of linking them every post.  Look in the subject tags/labels below for more direct leads.  We can make American presidents great again, but it requires making the American citizenry more wise and/or wisdom-loving.

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On a completely unrelated topic (heh heh), I watched The Revenant last night, having seen it the first time in its theatrical release a few years back.  On a high-def screen it is visually downright amazing (I remember it looking pretty good on the big screen, but not as crisp as on HD); unsurprisingly it received the Academy Award for best cinematography.  As meaning-of-life filmmaking goes, it's tops.  (I've placed it in the top 10 in my list of favorite films, where meaning-of-life significance is the primary ranking criterion.)  Not just the lead character but a great many of the others had it pretty tough by today's standards.  No cell phones, no google, no transportation system, no amenities we take for granted now.  What a bunch of whining, crybaby/crybully pussies the Dems especially and those they coddle are, huh?  Try getting mauled by a bear and left for dead in the wilderness before coming back and crying institutional racism, and then I might give a fuck how all sense of historical and personal perspective might still manage to be lost.  For me to give a fuck you'd have to do philosophical learning and still manage to come away clueless about how to manage life's unfairness with wisdom, because my give-a-fuck antennae would somehow have missed something big.  Just keep it up, Dems.  With the possible exception of Mayor Pete (and he's still a Democrat?), Trump is still less worse than these hubris-filled, wisdom-avoiding, loathsome leftist losers.  Maybe if the country got around to getting the philosophical education it needs (ffs already) its people would have much fewer problems, much less problems they'd be running to the coercive state to try to solve.  (As The Revenant makes clear, it's not just intellectual perfection a la Aristotle that matters, but also a will to power for which I am sure Nietzsche has plenty to say and display.  Rand may have synthesized these two human-life-components to a considerable extent; ya think?  But with Aristotle and Rand I say that the intellectual-perfection part is the more hierarchically fundamental/explanatory to what makes a choiceworthy life overall; we have to use our intellects to learn about will-to-power as a principle to perfect upon as appropriate to our human/rational constitution.  Shorter run, as portrayed in The Revenant, will-to-power may predominate....)  Ideally, a head of state is at least as wisdom-loving as a Jefferson and, even better, has the capacity to write something like the Medidations from scratch; as historical precedent shows, specialization doesn't preclude it.  (Could a full-time statesman compose the Nicomachean Ethics from scratch?  The Metaphysics?  What exactly is the frontier of possibilities here, hmmm?  One thing's for sure, a much smaller and therefore much less bullshit-oriented public-governance apparatus would leave the statesperson with that much extra time at the margins for art, spirituality and philosophy.)

[Addendum: Lest the race-baiting left/Dem nitwits imply that Making Presidents Great Again means "going back to the days when presidents owned slaves" - and that we'd better share that interpretation lightning quick, or else - they should be reminded, as if they really needed the reminding, that the Presidents and the flag are off-limits from their attempts to remove their presence from American life, whether chipping away at the margins with (e.g.) the Betsy Ross flag or otherwise.  That means Mt. Rushmore stays up with the slaveowners intact.  The left/Dem nitwits, when presented with Aristotle's body of writings, would obsess over his defense of slavery and views about the inferiority of women, and scheme ways to inject their faux-outrage into the conversation whenever possible, and divert the conversation from what's top priority.  Grow the fuck up, Dems/leftists; Trump won in good part because you're loathsome losers who refuse to learn.]

[Addendum #2: Let's grant that Trump's critics are on to something - there's a grain of truth there somewhere - that when Trump tweets that the angry radical quartet of "progressive" Dems, who are also women of color, that they should "go back to where they came from," there's something ugly akin to racism going on here.  [There was something very much like racism, if not downright racist in fact whether intended or not, in his tweet to the effect that a judge of Mexican heritage might be biased against him because of his (Trump's) statements about Mexico and immigration.  For this he was called out by fellow Republicans as having gone too far.]  Dems seem to "recognize" this right away, while Trump's supporters insist there's no dog whistling going on here.  If Trump is dog whistling, he's either not very effective at it - since Trump supporters don't seem to pick up on it - or the dog whistling is all occurring at some kind of subconscious level on both his and his supporters' part.  This latter part is actually a good possibility and should be given some good and careful thought (something that neither side is really equipped for; have you seen the shitshow?).  There is something real to the "woke" claims that structural racism still exists and operates by and large subconsciously.  [I just don't buy into all the whining or the idea that racism is still so embedded that it keeps POC down.  What "keeps POC down" is a combination of factors, not the least of which is left/Dem shitting all over personal responsibility, and shitting on going out and achieving anyway despite the obstacles to be overcome.  Watch and learn from Hidden Figures ffs, and stop being a bunch of fucking whiny blame-shifting coddled pussies.  And start actually listening to black conservatives like Sowell for once.  Want to get into a selective university on a level field of play, disadvantaged minorities?  Then improve your performance and remove all doubt rather than seeking handouts and shackles on others including the highest-performing nonwhite minorities.   Learn some bourgeois values and stop recklessly smearing advocates of bourgeois values as white supremacists while altogether failing to address the argument for bourgeois values, you FUCKING MORE-SCHOOLED-THAN-EDUCATED IVY LEAGUE IDIOTS!]  If it's a racist tweet, it's not exactly obvious how it is so if so much racism these days operates at a subconscious level - and perhaps Trump is exploiting the ambiguities here to get Dems to cry racism again, shove foot in mouth, etc.  But clearly it's triggering to say to people of color to "go back where they came from," and Trump is doing this unaccountably while the opposition cries racism unaccountably.  Can the dialogue be improved, somehow?  Anyway, with tweets like this one Trump is being an anti-constructive dickhead who doesn't possess either the knowledge or temperament or wisdom to heal divisions as opposed to fomenting them further, such fomenting seemingly to no other end than to get the Dems to make asses of themselves, which has the short-run effect of helping his re-election bid but the longer-term effect of making the national conversation more of a shitshow.  Next post: I address the controversy around athletes disrespecting the flag - which is what they're doing - and Trump's stupid, further-division-fomenting, anti-constructive response to those athletes.  What would a Rushmore president do?]

[Addendum #3: Gutfeld wipes the floor with the Democrats with one question: How many racists say to go back to where you came from, fix things there, then come back?  (Not that this excuses Trump's terrible messaging about . . . patriotism, I guess?  But god, the Democrats are pathetic.  One thing Trump has done with this is to draw more attention and scrutiny to the absolutely toxic - Jesse Watters calls them radioactive - "Squad."  The intellectually reckless leftism that created the "Squad" is on the Dems & their ilk.)  (A facebook comment pushing back on Gutfeld's point, which seems reasonable but somehow still strikes me as contentious especially in this context, a 'somehow' which I'll put my finger on in due time: "The racist part is insinuating American citizens aren't American by birth based on the only trait they all share, skin color.")]

The earth going forward

In a nutshell, the earth going forward will be affected by what human beings do.  This is why the era we are entering is now dubbed the Anthropocene.  There are two major trends going on right now: (1) technological maturation and (2) Stress on the ecological system.  (When I think of ecological stresses it's not just climate change that comes to mind; I also think of the acidification of the oceans, declining insect populations and biodiversity, destruction of the coral reefs, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, antibiotic-resistant diseases, and other readily googlable troubling phenomena.)

(Also, any educated person these days should be considerably familiar with ourworldindata.org.)

In the light of exponential growth in technology which is now seeing AI or machine learning going mainstream, advances in robotics, nanotechnology on the near horizon, lab-grown meat becoming affordable around this year (which can only put some size dent in the consumption of meat grown even in organic and therefore more resource-intensive and therefore more expensive processes, along with the methane produced from such processes), production automation making goods and services ever more affordable (counteracting to a great extent supposed disemployment effects), and any number of other advances, it becomes very difficult to envision the future of humanity with much detail beyond a few years from now.  The most significant of the advances would probably be in the area of AI, for the same reason that intelligence-capable human beings mark a rather radical departure from nature's and life's original courses.  And you have to imagine AI helping humans solve problems in conjunction with their use of all the other new emerging technologies.

Climate change and other actual or potential ecological crises would definitely be a major problem going forward, if present human trends using present technology continue.  But the latter is not going to happen.  Do we really have any way of telling what the earth is going to be like in half a century?  By then will biodiversity be engineered by humans, the coral reefs restored, agriculture moved to laboratories, etc.?  How about any advances in human culture, e.g., philosophy (and therefore superior rationality, and ultimately Aristotelian-caliber rationality or intellectual perfectionism) for children becoming mainstream?  Will AI help humanity transcend its addictions to rationality-undermining facets of social media, which people are already well becoming sick of and looking for solutions to?

This seems to be a good time for bets to be placed as to whether this or that ecological challenge will be met by technological advances, and when.  If people have too little information to go on to make such bets, then that just reinforces my point here: we really don't know how the earth is going to look going all that much forward.  And maybe that's the source of present-day anxieties.  (We may be living dangerously, with all the psychological consequences of that.)

We might try to go 50 years into the past for some guide to what we might expect to transpire over the next 50 years.  51 years ago, Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was released.  (It was also one year before man first landed on the moon.)  There was inevitably some amount of speculation on Kubrick's (and author of the book version, Arthur C. Clark's) part, such as the form that advanced AI might take, with the eventually villainous HAL 9000 ("I'm sorry, Dave...").  But there was only so much that could be done even at the level of speculation, which the film's "mysterious" ending is meant to convey.  As Kubrick explained in interviews at the time, the Star Gate sequence and the resulting Star Child are meant as symbolic and/or allegorical depictions of humanity taking a "leap" to a higher level of being.  (The musical cue from "Also Sprach Zarathustra," Richard Strauss's musical tribute to Nietzsche's novel, appears in the film where the ape advances into man, and then when the man advances into the Star Child, which Kubrick directly refers to in interviews as a kind of superman.)  But the symbolic or allegorical treatment is replacement for literal depictions of futuristic humanity or contact with alien species (represented indirectly by the black monolith), because at that point we just wouldn't know.

This reveals a problem with a lot of non-Kubrick science fiction.  Take even such lauded sci-fi as Blade Runner, which occurs in Los Angeles of 2019.  At that time, there would be humanoid replicants who almost thoroughly successfully mimic human beings.  Somehow, humanity would have gotten to the point of creating such replicants without first thinking through the implications.  But it's precisely such cultural resources as Blade Runner that gets humanity to first think such things through.  It's why the year 1984 came to pass without the world becoming like Orwell's novel.  As China begins implementing its "social credits" system here very soon, it invites warnings and comparisons to Big Brother.  (It's hard to tell whether the concerns here are overblown.)

Another common element in a lot of sci-fi, save perhaps for Star Trek: the futures depicted are often dystopian -- i.e., that humanity misused its technology with the result often being that a tyrannical government or corporate entity used that technology to control or dehumanize people, use them for gory entertainment purposes, consume them, limit their lifespans, manipulate their minds, and so on.  Even with Star Trek and Star Wars, we see wars occurring, but what would motivate beings who are that technologically advanced (and, presumably, intellectually advanced as they use their technology to learn how to become more morally and aesthetically perfect?) to go to war?  The movie Independence Day (1996) depicts a hostile alien race - which has mastered interstellar travel - coming to earth to use its resources.  Perhaps going forward, humans will increasingly demand that movies with such dubious and intelligence-insulting premises not be made?  That alone would be a cultural improvement, and less wasteful of storytelling resources.  And becoming smarter and more efficient with resources is just part of humanity's technological improvement.

The same year as 2001's release, Paul R. Ehrlich foresaw doom with his book, The Population Bomb.  In 1980 he made a wager with economist Julian Simon, "betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. ... Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period."  This strikes me as an instructive example of doom and gloom coming up against what Simon referred to as the ultimate resource: “skilled, spirited and hopeful people who will exert their will and imaginations for their own benefit, and so, inevitably, for the benefit of us all.”  In short, the human mind.

Which is to say, that one's level of anxiety over the future of planet earth is probably inversely proportional to one's confidence in the ability of humans to use their mental capacities to solve problems.

I can't say that I'm all that anxious about the condition of the earth going forward.

(My anxiety, if that's what it is, is more about how even intellectually- and culturally-advanced humans would manage to discover lasting meaning if/when they have all that extra time on their hands in a 'post-scarcity' era; I just hope beauty would always remain fulfilling, seeing as how 'living to kalon' - for the sake of the beautiful or noble or fine, where our values or needs are in harmonious proportion in a hierarchy (and wherein we discover our unique form of self-actualization or eudaimonia) - is ultimately the best theoretical accounting for our widely-shared commonsense standard of value that I can think of.  Perhaps that means humans eventually becoming essentially aesthetic-creative beings.  Is that what Nietzsche had in mind with the 'overman' idea?...)

Happiness and meaningfulness (and Frankl)

Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning is one of the most well-loved books in the philosophical-psychological literature.  Meaning in life is a central concern for everyone who lives an examined life (and perhaps everyone or nearly everyone lives one, to some extent or other).  Perhaps, as human beings, living an examined life is the very thing that makes it meaningful or worth living, per Socrates's ages-old dictum.  (My modification on his dictum would likely be this: "The extent to which a (human) life is unexamined, is the extent to which it isn't worth living.")

To those who examine the issues and questions surrounding life's meaning, the relation of happiness to meaning is almost sure to arise at some point.  Don't we humans want to be happy more than anything?  Isn't that what ultimately makes live worth living?  Isn't the pursuit of happiness what confers meaning upon our activities?

A recent article by Emily Esfhani Smith in The Atlantic suggests otherwise.  In it, she explicitly distinguishes a life of happiness or happiness-pursuit from a life of meaning, and brings in Frankl as a key figure for the discussion.  By "siding" with Frankl on the fundamental importance of meaningfulness in life, she claims to place herself in opposition to the idea that happiness is what ultimately matters.  As the title of her article indicates, she thinks that "there is more to life than being happy."  But is there some kind of opposition, much less a distinction, between the two (happiness and meaningfulness)?

Smith quotes the authors of a study in the Journal of Positive Psychology:

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors write. 

How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness, they found, is about feeling good. Specifically, the researchers found that people who are happy tend to think that life is easy, they are in good physical health, and they are able to buy the things that they need and want. While not having enough money decreases how happy and meaningful you consider your life to be, it has a much greater impact on happiness. The happy life is also defined by a lack of stress or worry. 

Most importantly from a social perspective, the pursuit of happiness is associated with selfish behavior -- being, as mentioned, a "taker" rather than a "giver." The psychologists give an evolutionary explanation for this: happiness is about drive reduction. If you have a need or a desire -- like hunger -- you satisfy it, and that makes you happy. People become happy, in other words, when they get what they want. Humans, then, are not the only ones who can feel happy. Animals have needs and drives, too, and when those drives are satisfied, animals also feel happy, the researchers point out. 

"Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others," explained Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of the study, in a recent presentation at the University of Pennsylvania. In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in need. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need," the researchers, which include Stanford University's Jennifer Aaker and Emily Garbinsky, write.

(Bolded emphases mine.)

There are some familiar themes being sounded here, yes?  The pursuit of happiness being linked to selfishness would certainly not be troublesome to an influential ethical egoist such as Ayn Rand, right? (Keep in mind that Rand's conception of egoism and of happiness isn't about "receiving benefits from others" but rather, in its noblest and fully-formed manifestation, about producing or creating benefits for oneself - like Halley and his fifth concerto, for instance.)

Continuing:

What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans, according to Roy Baumeister, the lead researcher of the study and author, with John Tierney, of the recent book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Baumeister, a social psychologists at Florida State University, was namedan ISI highly cited scientific researcher in 2003. 

The study participants reported deriving meaning from giving a part of themselves away to others and making a sacrifice on behalf of the overall group. In the words of Martin E. P. Seligman, one of the leading psychological scientists alive today, in the meaningful life "you use your highest strengths and talents to belong to and serve something you believe is larger than the self." For instance, having more meaning in one's life was associated with activities like buying presents for others, taking care of kids, and arguing. People whose lives have high levels of meaning often actively seek meaning out even when they know it will come at the expense of happiness. Because they have invested themselves in something bigger than themselves, they also worry more and have higher levels of stress and anxiety in their lives than happy people. Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low happiness among parents, including the ones in this study. In fact, according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, research shows that parents are less happy interacting with their children than they are exercising, eating, and watching television. 

"Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy," Baumeister told me in an interview.

Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important finding of the study, according to the researchers. While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning. 

Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. "Thinking beyond the present moment, into the past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life," the researchers write. "Happiness is not generally found in contemplating the past or future." That is, people who thought more about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more meaning in their lives, though they were less happy. 

Having negative events happen to you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life. Another study from 2011 confirmed this, finding that people who have meaning in their lives, in the form of a clearly defined purpose, rate their satisfaction with life higher even when they were feeling bad than those who did not have a clearly defined purpose. "If there is meaning in life at all," Frankl wrote, "then there must be meaning in suffering."

I imagine Miss Rand having a field day with all this; my present task is to re-create such a field day in my own style and given my background in eudaimonist ethics broadly speaking, notably David L. Norton's version.  Supplementing Rand's eudaimonism with Norton's, do we get any meaningful (ahem) contrast between the meaningful life and the happy life?

In the first bolded emphasis above, in the first quoted text, I highlight the notion of "happiness without meaning."  Does this mean (ahem) that happiness is without meaning, or does it mean that there can be happiness with meaning?  If the latter, it doesn't appear to be addressed at all in the article, so we're left hanging with the impression that happiness and meaning may indeed be quite separate from one another.  After all, happiness is associated with "selfish" behavior while meaning is associated with transcending the self for a "higher" purpose beyond oneself.

I should mention that this supposed dichotomy pervades the popular literature these days, including the "self-help" literature but also the "spirituality" literature (meaningfulness being rightfully associated with a concept of spirituality), with spirituality conflated in many people's minds with belief in God.  (Or, in many cases, this is necessarily associated with the belief that an ancient person named Jesus was born of a virgin and was resurrected from the dead; without believing this, it would seem, a great number of people would find their lives devoid of meaning.  I find this decidedly bizarre, but I've yet to "see the light," as they say.)  Indeed, well-known pastor Rick Warren declares that a purpose-driven life is one that is Christ-centered, not self-centered.  Similarly, rabbi Simon Jacobson writes (in a more intellectually-informed way) that a meaningful life is a "G-d"-informed one.  Eastern spiritual leaders such as Swami Prabhupada tell us that self-realization comes about through becoming one with the divine.  And on and on it goes.

I, on the other hand, think of happiness and meaning as intertwined so closely that I have a term that subsumes them both: a life of fulfillment.  Now, meaningfulness tends to be associated in the non-philosophical popular consciousness with spiritual fulfillment, which is associated either with (again) belief in God (or Christ), or treated in such a way as to be a separate and distinct matter from fulfillment of the rest of one's life, or both.  This latter reeks of a soul-body dichotomy [*], while the former begs all sorts of important questions.  The former tends to associate meaningfulness with hope, and hope with belief in an afterlife.  I offer the film The Shawshank Redemption as evidence that hope need not be bound up in ideas of the supernatural.

([*] - "Happiness," according to the researchers in Smith's article, is about doing the same things other animals do, satisfying animalistic bodily needs.  "Meaning" is doing what is distinctive to us.  Or something like that.  Point being, there's a purported dichotomy here.  Why can't meaningfulness include satisfying the bodily urges?  Hmmm?  Or, alternatively, can we distinguish meaningful bodily-urge-satisfaction from non-meaningful bodily-urge-satisfaction, or degrees (or kinds?) of meaningfulness in such activities?  Eating a delicious and nutritious meal capped off by a perfectly sweet creme brulee sounds a lot more, well, meaningful than eating ordinary potato chips; or, it has more dimensions of meaning to it.  Potato chips do provide some meaningful benefit; so do bland rice and beans.  But what if the good dimensions of these can be integrated while excluding the not-so-good, as per Aristotelian dialectic?  Ah, now we're getting somewhere!)

I think we begin to see here the confusions piled upon confusions in much of the (popular) literature on happiness, meaning, spirituality, hope, and related concepts.  Thankfully there is a philosophical literature that typically seeks precision in these matters, and wouldn't you know it, it's the (neo-)Aristotelian literature that best exemplifies the reaching of said precision.

In the philosophical literature, the concept of eudaimonia goes back to the ancients.  Now, to be sure, the concept of eudaimonia raised many questions and concerns among the ancients, namely: what is it, exactly?  But given what the greatest of the ancient thinkers had to say about it, and what modern descendants of the idea have had to say about it, the questions and concerns have been more productive than confusion-propagating.  It should be noted that the ancients - the Greeks - were worldly enough in their worldview as not to find a dichotomy between life's ultimate meaning and this-worldly pursuits, with all the confusions perpetuated by acceptance of such a dichotomy.  It should further be noted that Plato's ideal of a transcendent Good was radical for his time and place in comparison to Aristotle's much more naturalistic, empirical, worldly ideas about success in life.

(Besides, an Aristotelian might ask, What if a person's belief in the supernatural is indeed mistaken or groundless?  Does that leave the person in the dark when it comes to life's ultimate questions?  Or are there answers to be had through the normal procedures of secular scientific discovery?  Can we locate a telos for us in our nature, a standard by which to determine right conduct given our distinctively human potentialities?  Hell, what would the likes of Thomas Jefferson (a deist - which is practically distinct from an atheist how exactly?) say?)

The concept of eudaimonia is associated in the Aristotelian literature with a concept of perfection (or in the Greek, teleois) of our natures, of bringing to explicit completion (actuality) that which is implicit at the outset (potentiality).  In modern lingo, this lines up perhaps perfectly (ahem) with the concept of self-actualization, defined by Merriam-Webster as reaching fully one's potential.  Then again, it might line up more perfectly with Alan Gewirth's concept of self-fulfillment.  (There's that term again: fulfillment.)  Anyway, let's say that eudaimonia lines up with a concept of perfection in one's life, that is, a life that is not lacking in any significant way - that is to say, that it is an all-encompassing concept that subsumes all the goods one might want out of life.  That includes both happiness and meaning.  Isn't it synonymous indeed with life fulfillment?  What else does it mean to realize fully one's potential?  There's potential in humans that (when actualized) is manifested in both happiness and meaning.  Indeed, what else does self-actualization involve if not the full array of goods; in Maslow's terminology there is a hierarchy of needs at the top of which there is meaning, fulfillment, "transcendence" of some base conception of the self, spirituality, hope, and so forth (including - hell, why not? - happiness).

There is a modern conception of happiness that has been widely recognized as being spiritually impoverished.  The most influential of modern philosophers, Immanuel Kant, apparently had this conception of happiness (the satisfaction of inclination) in mind when rejecting the thesis that happiness is the highest ethical aim in life.  There are materialistic connotations to this conception of happiness, associated with the pursuit of economic good that so preocuppied modern political economists in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.  But even that had its limitations, as when John Stuart Mill, leading philosopher of utilitarianism ("the greatest balance of happiness over unhappiness, for the greatest number"), distinguished between the "higher" and the "lower" pleasures, illustrated most famously by his dictum that "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."  (It bears mentioning here that before writing on ethics and political philosophy, Mill was himself among those devoted to questions of political economy - indeed, he wrote the treatise in which classical/Anglo/Smithian/Ricardian political economy culminated, Principles of Political Economy (1848), before the Marxian interpretation and marginalist revolution took things in different directions.  That Marx's comprehensive worldview was so deeply immersed in questions of political economy, should indicate how central political economy has been to so much modern philosophizing.)

But the ancient and Aristotelian conception of happiness as eudaimonia doesn't line up with this modern conception of happiness as pleasure, and it is the modern conception of happiness that evidently infuses the discussion in Ms. Smith's Atlantic piece.  Moreover, there is most definitely a confusion when "wants" and "needs" are discussed the way they are.  (See again the third paragraph of the first section of quoted text above.)  In one sentence there is the talk of "a need or a desire" and in the very next there is mention only of getting what one wants (desires?).  But (a) There is a distinction among eudaimonists (and Norton is explicit about this) between mere desire and right desire, the satisfaction of which he defines in terms of eudaimonia or self-actualization; and (b) Maslow's hierarchy is a hierarchy of needs and not of wants per se; it is in getting what we need that we self-actualize.  (Surely the distinction between want and need in that Rolling Stones song is apropos?  There's also surely a tie-in to the House, M.D. television series, as the wiki article points out.  What we have here is an absence of failure to integrate.)  Finally on this point, it's commonly understood that self-actualization has an interpersonal or social dimension that goes beyond the "selfish" satisfaction of one's desires to the exclusion of others (a point that Rand did not disagree with, but might have been much more explicit about).

I'm intrigued by the last quotation above, from Frankl, that if there is meaning in life at all, then there's meaning in suffering.  I don't see a real problem with this as long as we distinguish suffering from despair, that is, a suffering without hope.  And when I, personally, think of hope, my thoughts almost invariably go to that movie with Andy Dufresne and Red.

I think a useful distinction that might be made between happiness and meaningfulness is as follows: happiness is a psychological state or condition that amounts, qua psychological phenomenon, to a feeling of life-satisfaction - or, better yet, life-fulfillment, whereas meaningfulness refers to one's existential condition.  (Existentialism is primarily concerned, after all, with meaning in a world devoid of a discernible cosmic telos.)  Norton, meanwhile, identifies eudaimonia as both a feeling and a condition attendant upon the satisfaction of right desire (which is understood in Aristotelian terms - as the actualization of the potentialities which constitute the self).

Frankl's book on man's search for meaning is a must-read in any event.  There is a clear-cut parallel in my mind between that book (particularly the first half) and the idea behind the Shawshank story - namely, how one can have or discover hope amid suffering.  Indeed, even when happiness or eudaimonia does elude us, e.g., under extreme conditions of unfreedom as found in a prison or concentration camp - even as much as happiness or eudaimonia serves as some kind of ultimate standard of successful human living that justifies pursuits in that direction - there is something we can nonetheless hold onto in such dire times to give our lives meaning (and which needn't imply affirmation of the supernatural), and that is hope.  In Randian terms, this emerges as the benevolent universe premise and is reflected in Roark's attitude toward life as he works in a quarry (when he might have pursued the life of "happiness" by accepting a commission that would compromise his architectural integrity).  In Aristotelian terms, all of this emerges as an endorsement of harmonious integration of the seemingly disparate ends (aims) of human life.

On Shelly Kagan's "Is death bad for you?"

Or: for whom is death bad?

Last year, Yale philosophy professor Shelly Kagan posed something of a puzzler.  If we use the classic Epicurean formulation that death is nothing to fear since its presence means one's absence (and therefore there is no being any longer in existence for whom death impacts), and one's presence means its absence.  And yet, Kagan's puzzler goes, we still regard death as a bad thing, something to be avoided and/or dreaded.  An additional part of the puzzler goes something like this: If nonexistence is a bad, and death is to a living being what pre-birth nonexistence was, then never being born is also a bad for those that might have lived.  And yet we don't have the same attitude toward that sort of nonexistence that we do toward death, i.e., the cessation of living activities.  I refer the reader to a fuller statement of the puzzler in the link provided above.

I think I have an answer to the puzzler, and it goes something like this: All else being equal, a sentient existence is preferable, for a sentient being, to nonexistence.  So let's say an animal dies, and we ask, for whom is this death a bad thing?  One might be tempted to offer this answer: The death is in some way retroactively bad for the animal that once existed.  But what is that supposed to mean?  How is something retroactively bad?  Then, you are pushed in the direction of formulating the point in a nearly-identical but more helpful way: A future death is (or would be) bad for the sentient being currently existing.  That is to say, a permanent cessation of one's sentient existence is bad for the being that one is, right now - and is therefore the reason most folks tend to avoid it.  Certainly, as a nonexperience, it is not a bad that can be experienced; the bad involved here is the cessation of one's sentient existence, which is a bad whether or not one has met that fate yet.  Further, in order for something to be a bad, it has to be a bad for an existing sentient being - and so the puzzler as it concerns nonexistent beings doesn't have applicability in this analysis.

Finally, as to how something can be a bad if one never experiences it, let's liken this bad in this regard to a broken leg.  A broken leg is a bad, even if one never happens to suffer a broken leg.  Because it is a bad, it's something we usually try to avoid (although we might risk suffering one engaging in activities we might find sufficiently rewarding otherwise - and we can never get rid of risk in life, anyway, and we do in fact incur some non-zero-percent risk of death in our every existing moment, a risk we incur because life is worth living and the ongoing risk is worth it).

Does this definitively resolve Kagan's puzzler?  I think it does, but seeing as how definitiveness can often be so elusive, and given my sneaking suspicion that I might be overlooking something on this subject, my thinking on the subject certainly isn't over with. ;-)  We also want to factor in, over and above sentience, the value and quality of the cognitive life of the being - i.e., the idea that there is value in high-level intellectual activity that may well be worth some non-trivial risk of suffering, physical-pain-and-pleasure-wise.  We are unique among animals in our ability to (intellectually) ponder our own deaths, for example, which brings us some degree of discomfort, but which comes with the territory of intellectual living (the examined life).  As to this "Schopenhauer-ian" notion often going around in philosophical circles that we'd be better off having never been born: that would of course depend on whether human existence characteristically involves a negative balance of happiness vs. suffering - something that's denied in traditional eudaimonist ethics which point to a satisfactory mode of living usually made possible through virtuous activity (which is rooted in the perfection or excellent use of one's intellectual capacity, at least in an Aristotelian version of eudaimonism).

To be continued . . . ?

For Your Viewing Enjoyment

The internet seems to be getting more and more funny by the day (well, for me, anyway). I'll happily return the favor:

Couldn't embed this one, but it's worth it.

Ain't integration fun? :-)

The Benevolent Universe Premise

The Benevolent Universe Premise of which Ayn Rand spoke is something that takes years to really understand, deep down. It takes years and years of automatizated or habituated integration before the full reality of it becomes clear to oneself. People coming way, way, way late to the game here are not going to understand what whirlwind they have sown for themselves.

If you accept the Benevolent Universe Premise, you refuse to accept the potency of evil. The existence of evil depends upon sanction from the good. When that sanction is withdrawn, it is as if a whole new universe of possibilities opens up to oneself. You don't have to accept that the injustice and irrationality of the status quo are the given. In fact, if you operate on the Benevolent Universe Premise, you creatively find ways to turn negatives into positives. The last day has taught me that in a completely first-handed way.

If you accept and act upon the Benevolent Universe Premise, you know that evasion comes at a price, but that the good - i.e., justice - can and might win out in the end. You even learn that a single dedicated independent individual can win out over an entire army of context-droppers and second-handers thrown together hastily and with a sometimes-appalling disregard for principles - or even for simple human decency. I hope that the coming days, weeks, and months will illustrate the importance of the Benevolent Universe Premise in fueling and fulfilling one's life.

In the name of the best within us,

Spiritual Uplift for the Day

Wouldn't it be great if a lot more music today was this inspiring? (You go, Lenny!)



Story about Mahler's masterpiece here.

Go forth and eudaemonize! :-)

Spiritual Uplift for the Day

From the "Roarkian Soul" department:



(h/t: Frank O'Connor) (Also: TUW)

(ADDENDUM: More spiritual uplift.)

(ADDENDUM #2: Is this far and away the best philosophy blog on the internet, or what? :-D )

(ADDENDUM #3: Nicely done, self. Keep it up! :-) )

Essentialized Comprehensiveness

If you have a look at the selection of books in my Profile, you find that it has a lot of books by or about Ayn Rand, enough to take up about half of the intellectual-theoretical books listed there. The rest consists to a large extent of economic-theoretical works in the "Austrian" tradition. Why, if I aim for comprehensiveness, don't I include a massive selection of influential works from all across the spectrum of ideas? Because the list is essentialized for the sake of unit-economy. Unit-economy is a highly capitalistic principle. Ayn Rand's whole system is geared toward people who think like capitalists. She recognized the essential principle behind capitalism: that it is, unavoidably and undeniably, the system geared to the requirements of human life, i.e., of the mind. (Hint: It's the principle behind Aristotle's boundless intellectual activity and productivity.)

So, the list basically gives you all that you need to know, in essence, to figure out what's what, and then to flourish like you've never flourished before. The key is not in resenting the capitalists (and stagnating), but in becoming a capitalist (and growing). (The truth here is an exact inversion of Marx.)

In this, Rand was so far ahead of her time that, for the most part, and so very tragically, she was casting pearls before swine. (See, e.g., here.) Only swine turn away from the essential message of John Galt's radio address - the role of the mind in human existence - and of Ayn Rand's body of work. Only anti-capitalist uber-swine who call themselves "philosophers" would blank out this stark and glaring theme, and indulge the mainstream swine in their base and ignoble ignorance regarding the role of the mind in human existence. (To paraphrase a pearl cast heroically before so many swine, such "philosophers" should be provided a club and bearskin and a cave to dwell in, instead of chaired university professorships. The latter situation is fucking insane for an advanced civilized society.)

If you want an actual real-life instantiation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, look no further than the widespread swinish reaction to Ayn Rand's pro-mind and pro-life ideas. Only swine run from the word "selfishness," for instance, without giving any sort of careful thought to meanings (intended or otherwise), or to context, or to hierarchy, or to integration. The swine have been conditioned to react to stimuli in certain ways (e.g., to words instead of concepts or ideas or essentials), so much so that they revolt even against a messenger who advises them to use their minds to the utmost so that they might then move past swinehood and into the adulthood of the intellect.

Unlike myriad academically-tenured destroyers of the mind, this here philosopher is no swine.

And things are going to change drastically for the better, and much faster than the out-of-it crowd could even begin to realize.

Mark my words.

:-)

Perfecting the Art of Thinking

Nicely done, self. Keep it up! :-)

[ADDENDUM: Focus!]

Individualism and Modern Philosophy

In a very recent post, I cited Nozick's offered explanation for the opposition amongst the Intellectuals to capitalism. Nozick suggests basically a psychological explanation. But of course I had to press the issue to the question not just of capitalism, but of individualism. (In turning my mind to the subject of moral individualism in relation to the state of modern philosophy, I find that my thoughts keep expanding; an adequate treatment of the subject might have to be chapter-length, so I couldn't post in depth on the subject here and now.)

One might think that while opposition to capitalism among many philosophers is readily understandable psychologically, the decided lack of interest among philosophers on the subject of individualism is bizarre. If individualism extols as a primary virtue "thinking for oneself," you'd think the philosophers would be most interested in the subject. But what academic literature is there out there on the subject? Aside from Norton, and a few Rand-influenced ethical philosophers (Machan, Mack, Rasmussen and Den Uyl), and parts of Lomasky and Nozick, what literature have professional philosophers generated on the subject in recent memory? Why does so deeply American a subject as individualism interest America's intellectual class so little?

I came to these thoughts when working through possible non-psychological explanations for the widespread antipathy to capitalism among intellectuals. At some point during one of Peikoff's lectures, a short and simple philosophical explanation was given: the widespread acceptance of "altruistic" morality in its various forms (e.g., Christianity, Kant, Mill, Marx, Rawls). But I'm not really satisfied with that explanation. Among the intellectuals, the antipode of altruism is not capitalism or individualism, but egoism, and the intellectuals have been hard at work devising moral theories that work somewhere in between the antipodes of egoism (e.g. Rand) and altruism (e.g. Comte). They find such extremes unacceptable because (aside from any pathologically pragmatistic opposition to extremes) altruism runs up against problems of rational motivation (which Nagel's The Possibility of Altruism makes a thorough effort to confront), while egoism supposedly - supposedly - runs up against the problem of respecting all moral agents over and above their serviceability to the agent's own interests.

But what about individualism? The most widely accessible and widely-read "text" on individualist ethics is Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. The theme is "individualism versus collectivism, not in politics but in man's soul." The political themes are there, but mainly by implication. The full implication would have to wait another 14 years. But aside from the supposedly "weird" characterizations and narrative that drive many a reader to miss the point, what about the Roarkian individualist ethos makes professional philosophers so uninterested? True, there are professional philosophers aplenty who openly oppose egoism, but I don't know of any that would dare openly oppose individualism, certainly not in America. Instead, on the subject of individualism, there's one conspicuous fact here: silence.

This might reduce back to some psychological explanations. The Fountainhead is, after all, about individualism and collectivism in the human soul, and provides certain archetypes of motivation. Roark finds himself in fundamental opposition to what, for a long time, he can only term "The Principle Behind the Dean." Keating embraces that principle; it's about the only principle a pragmatist, for all the pragmatists' opposition to principles, can willingly accept. One thing about Rand's style of writing is that she would directly confront, in the most extreme and oppositional terms, the psychology of her readers. The Roark-Keating opposition is pretty deep, and being more fundamentally a psychological rather than intellectual one, it carries more fundamental explanatory power about how people behave. (It would explain, for instance, why someone would turn toward a less intellectual life as such, as distinct from turning to an intellectual life that is, say, socialism-friendly. It also explains Ayn Rand's - the real Ayn Rand's, not the caricatured, distorted, misrepresented and smeared Ayn Rand's - behavior in regard to those who disagreed with her. She valued intellectuality above agreement as such. (There are rare exceptions, like with her treatment of Kant, but she simply did not get Kant or his context.))

This gets to something very fundamental, perhaps not as fundamental in Rand's philosophy as it was in her very soul and being: sense of life. One's views about a thing such as individualism are fundamentally conditioned by one's sense-of-life. Now, either you share Rand's basic sense of life, or you don't. (I like to think that I share her sense of life, and then some.) With Rand, on the subject of individualism, there is heroic and passionate affirmation and praise and benevolence. With someone who doesn't share Rand's sense of life, the response is one of so much indifference.

The logical conclusion to draw here is that the mainstream of the Intellectual Class does not share Ayn Rand's basic sense of life. The American People, on the other hand - the best within the American people, of course - well, they do share her basic sense of life.

And that's how modern "canon" philosophy has defaulted on its task and failed the people. Can I not help but think that modern "canon" philosophy's days are sooooo numbered?

:-)

[ADDENDUM: See any entry under "Individualism" here? For that, you have to go here. CASE CLOSED.]

Perfectivism: Some Rough Ideas

Intro comments: This is from an email I wrote earlier today to fellow eudaemonists who are in academia, in its original (unedited) but copy-pasted form. The subject of the email is "eudaemonism as perfectivism." I consider this to be the absolute state of the art in ethical theory, and encourage anyone reading this to forward this onto anyone that might find it of interest. The terminology and discussion here is somewhat technical and presupposes some familiarity with the ethical tradition (the eudaemonist tradition in particular) and with the academic literature. I'm fairly confident that the basic idea - and most especially the spirit animating these investigations - passes the highest possible philosophical muster, academic or otherwise. (The opposition to Rand is toast, guaranteed.)

-----

I think the term "perfectionism" carries with it a lot of unhelpful baggage, so I've decided to adopt a new term, perfectivism. I think a perfectivist account of eudaemonia or flourishing is the best, most complete, most (ahem) perfect account. Here is it: eudaemonia has gone under wide range of headings, terms, associations, etc. The usual translation of eudaemonia as "happiness" is misleading since happiness refers to the psychological reward associated with eudaemonia. Eudaemonia isn't just a psychological condition but something more comprehensive than that, something I would sum up in the phrase "perfective living." I'm aiming to provide the most complete account of that, something that someone of Aristotle's dialectical sensibilities would aim for (and I think that's the concept he himself was aiming for).

Someone of Aristotle's dialectical sensibilities would look at the tradition and identify the good parts that varying thinkers were aiming for, while discarding the limitations, mistakes, one-sided understandings, etc. So my perfective account by its very nature has to take into account and integrate with it the best in Rand and Norton; I'm also going to be reading Gewirth's Self-Fulfillment shortly (first chapter is here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s6413.pdf ), since one way of rendering eudaemonia might well be "self-fulfillment," a term which is supposed to be more encompassing than self-actualization.

Here's the contribution each of the other thinkers makes to the perfectivist understanding of eudaemonia: Norton does an eminently plausible job of linking the familiar term "self-actualization" to the ancient concept of eudaemonia. At the minimum, eudaemonia incorporates self-actualization into a complete account. The Merriam-Webster definition of "self-actualization" is fitting: to reach one's full potential, which has Greek/Aristotelian accounts of goodness or perfection written all over it. Norton makes his account of eudaemonia as complete as he can by referring to eudaemonia as both a condition and a feeling that attends the satisfaction of right desire. The feeling itself of eudaemonia he doesn't translate into any other term (though I think that feeling is best captured by the term "happiness"), but he does speak of it as its own intrinsic reward; the feeling itself could not be perfected upon; it is the feeling of completeness that comes with the condition of living completely. In thinking through this, I've come to understand eudaemonia as encompassing the condition (the perfective activity of self-actualization) and the feeling (happiness) under something integrating these two into a whole: complete or perfective living, fulfilled living, self-fulfillment. This is an inclusive-end eudaemonia, incorporating, integrating and encompassing as completely as possible the goods that constitute it.

Now, Rand. Rand is most Aristotelian in terms of her identification of the human good with rational activity, that activity expressive of our distinctive mode of excellence or perfection. She comes at eudaemonia from the aspect of our rational natures, based on the identification that the human mode of flourishing (I don't know whether to say "flourishing" is more synonymous with eudaemonia or with the condition-aspect of it, i.e., self-actualization; also, if a feeling is also a condition of sorts, then I think we can speak of eudaemonia and flourishing as synonymous, flourishing referring to all those conditions, including the feeling of happiness, that make up complete living) arises from the perfective application of the characteristic mode of human functioning: rational activity. So we have a eudaemonism that is a virtue-ethics in which the fundamental/primary/basic virtue that explains all the other virtues as applications of this primary virtue, which is the virtue of rationality. I think of rationality in terms of perfective intellectual activity, which (self-referentially?) involves the seeking of the best and most complete explanations of the phenomena in our capacity as philosophers, and involves the practical application of rationality to the specific individuated life-pursuits of each person. (I think that this is to say, perhaps in very Aristotelian fashion, that eudaemonia cannot happen without philosophy integrated into one's life, even if one isn't a philosopher by profession. I know that saying this is in very Randian fashion, if "Philosophy: Who Needs It" is any indicator.) The whole point of Rand's epistemology - a point I think is sorely missed - is a perfective account of rational activity with a supremely practical aim in mind (which she gets to when she talks about concepts as devices to achieve unit-economy, i.e., mental efficiency and, in turn, mental potency), keeping in mind the basic thesis of Atlas Shrugged: the role of the mind in human existence. (Also, the basic thesis of her work: the primacy and supremacy of reason over egoism and capitalism.) It is by perfecting one's cognitive processes through rigorous application of a systematizing-empirical-inductive approach to inquiry that we will be most well-equipped to deal with the challenges of life. Whether this puts Rand and/or Aristotle into the "perfectionist" category in the Hurka-ian sense, I'll leave that for debate.

For philosophers-per-se, this perfective intellectual activity is captured by the term "contemplation," I think. So any eudaemonic life does involve a philosophical or contemplative aspect (you can't have someone who is eudaemon who isn't possessed of wisdom or a love of it). But with a figure like Rand, and I'm assuming like Aristotle, there isn't a dichotomy between theoretical and practical; the ultimate (eudaemonic) purpose of this intellectual activity is practical application to individuated, particular, concrete problem-solving, challenge-meeting, etc. In the Nortonian sense, this involves discovering and actualizing one's distinctive potentialities or excellences; for the person whose eudaemonia consists in philosophizing by profession, this means its own distinctive form of theoretical and practical unity; ideally, the practical life for the philosopher is the theoretical life. The Randian angle here is that the philosopher should aim for accessibility and clarity to the wider public. (I say "aim for"; if you looked at the "dialogue" section of the expanded 2nd edition of ITOE, it involves only specialists and long-time students. Apparently at some point the philosopher ends up spending at least some time communicating/collaborating with only high-level specialists who share the appropriate context.) I'm assuming it's an Aristotelian angle as well, as I'm sure Aristotle's long lost dialogues would have made quite evident.

Okay, I'm tapped out for the moment. Thoughts?

Oh, also, this account of eudamonia incorporates Randian and Nietzschean (and, I'm guessing, Aristotelian) ideas of goodness in terms of "life-affirmingness," where eudaemonia is then understood as the most life-affirming mode of activity. And the most life-affirming activity is synonymous with perfective activity. Something like that. I think Rand subtly though understandably got some concepts confused here: Our understanding of goodness comes, as it does with Foot in Natural Goodness, from life-phenonema, where we can understand life-processes in terms of need-fulfillment (with a Maslow-inspired "hierarchy of needs" analysis applying to the relation between life and flourishing). Where Rand got her terminology mistaken is her definition of "value" as "that which one acts to gain and/or keep," but she implicitly retreats from this in a footnote on goal-directed action. It turns out that by "goal" she didn't mean "goal" in the usual (correct) sense but something more broad than that, i.e., "directed toward a result [telos?]." Here's how I think the value-language applies: Goodness is biocentric; value is dependent upon sentience. (That is to say, plants and amoebae don't pursue values since value-pursuit depends upon at least a basic-level awareness of that which is good for the organism.) Norton's answer to the is-ought problem identifies the relation of "ought" to "is" in terms of potentiality in relation to actuality. Actually, I think that this is an appropriate identification of the relation between goodness and nature, i.e., as instantiated in life-phenomena. The narrower subdivision of that is the "fact-value" relationship, and if value is dependent upon sentience, then we understand the facts (sentient life) that give rise to the concept "value." Then we get the narrower subdivision of the fact-value relation, the "is-ought" relation, that which applies to specifically human goodness, resting upon the ability of human beings to recognize and act for reasons. If the standard of goodness is life-affirmingness and the standard of value a psychological rewardingness, we come to a moral standard that incorporates these two, i.e., a eudaemonic one. I think this is exactly what Rand was aiming for with the best arguments and understanding she had at her avail at the time. For that reason, her argument - or perhaps way better yet, her (systematic-empirical) method of approach, which contains in it means of self-correction for faulty or incomplete arguments - merits a very close second look. (The expensive way of going about studying that approach is to immerse oneself in Peikoff's lecture courses. The inexpensive way I aim to essentialize for a wide audience in Perfectivism. It's Aristotelian-dialectical in its basic orientation, so it definitely has that going for it.)

David L. Norton's Personal Destinies

My current book project was initially conceived as something somewhat less ambitious (although the logic of it eventually led me to what it is now), and that was more or less a comparison between Ayn Rand's normative ethics and the ethics of David L. Norton's masterful Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism. I ended up making it my own personal destiny to write an ultimate book with the ideas of these two still at the substantive core, just teasing out the implications.

The very idea of connecting Rand to Norton in a close way seemingly hadn't occurred to anyone before, but you'd think it might have since the parallels are so compelling. They're both ethical individualists. They're both eudaemonists. They both have a compelling normative ethics - so darned compelling that were they widely known, understood, adopted and implemented, utopia would be automatic. So perhaps you can say that the mission of Toward Utopia is to make this normative-ethical vision so obviously compelling, so indisputable, so undeniable that a helluva lot of people ought to get on board right quick so that we fast-track right toward utopia.

Here's the gist of the program: We understand Ayn Rand's normative ethics as, in essence, a self-actualization ethics. The ground of virtue is the need to self-actualize, and we recognize self-actualization to be an inherently desirable thing. Rand and Norton conceive of the fundamental virtue in distinct but complementary ways (which can be integrated): Norton conceives of virtue as integrity to the self to be actualized; Rand conceives of virtue as rationality, or the optimal exercise of the human cognitive faculty, reason being the basic human mode of functioning. Rand's epistemology comes into play here because her entire philosophy is built toward a practical end, which is living our lives to the utmost. This is best achieved through mental unit-economy, which stems from following proper cognitive guidelines; the perfection of our cognitive faculty leads to optimal cognitive efficiency, effectively raising our IQ. (There is a genius, i.e., daemon, in all of us, see.) That fast-tracks us toward self-actualization, and when people cooperatively pool their now-enhanced cognitive resources, things get fast-tracked even more, which frees up yet more cognitive resources to enhance, and so forth. So I'm just playing my part in getting this avalanche started. After that, there is just no room for the cycnicism, pessimism, and defeatism (in addition to all that cognitive inefficiency and irrationality) currently holding us back from achieving a better world.

So this posting is about Personal Destinies. I don't intend it to be a review so much as a brief exposition and commentary in which I can barely hold back my fawning. If I had to name a single favorite philosophy book, it would be this one. There's a good reason why this is. First, my philosophical specialty is ethics, and ethics has a certain centrality in philosophy that the other branches of philosophy don't have. (Epistemology has a centrality of its own. Perhaps the contrast here is this: epistemology is more basic, while ethics is more central.) Second, it's expertly and beautifully crafted. Just brilliant. It also has the "cred" of coming from a leading university press, so there's no reason, no fucking reason, for academics to (continue to) overlook it. Third, it's true - chock full of true.

There's one downside: it is obscure. That is to say, it is written in an obscure style. I say this because some years ago, as I was in college and then in grad school, I tried on two occasions to venture into the book, and barely followed what Norton was saying. Now, when a graduate student in philosophy specializing in ethics reads this book and doesn't get what's going on, that's pretty good evidence that it's obscure. And I still say it's obscure. In fact, while there are parts of the book that I understand - and like a lot - there are still parts of the book quite hard for me to follow even on the basis of two recent readings. I'll get to that in a bit. But first, another tidbit as to how I re-encountered this book, if this is any clue as to the completist-perfectionist nature of the mental process involved.

See, when I first delved into the book way back when in school, I noticed that some chapters were devoted to critics of "recent eudaemonisms," including that of Nietzsche. The idea of Nietzsche as a eudaemonist struck me as odd and/or intriguing, which is why it stuck in the back of my mind for later retrieval. It was then a discussion in early 2010 on the SOLO forum in which Rand commentator Jennifer Burns and Rand-defender James Valliant were participating, where links between Rand and Nietzsche were discussed - I think it was about their respective celebrations of human excellence - and that's when it clicked. I had to go back and scrounge up my Norton book. Then I "got it." The first chapter (the most accessible) had me hooked.

(To even think of drawing the connection between Rand, Nietzsche and Norton requires a context of knowledge that only a few people possess. Hell, how did I even know about Norton to begin with? Only because he was mentioned in the works of Machan, Rasmussen and Den Uyl. And how many people have read them indepth? That demographic is limited to people interested in Rand, in ethics, and in academic-style philosophy. A small group to begin with. So what are the odds Norton's book would have fallen into total obscurity were it not for the works of these Rand-influenced philosophers? [Insert angry rant about Rand and the academy here.])

Now, about the book. I mentioned the first chapter. The first chapter is enough to sell a reader on the basic idea. I knew just from reading the first chapter that there was a book project in the making. The chapter's title is "The Ethical Priority of Self-Actualization." Norton here is doing an ambitious integration of his own here: in a manner hardly at all accomplished in any of the other literature, Norton ties the ancient concept of eudaemonia to the 20th century concept of self-actualization popularized first and foremost by Abraham Maslow. I mean, how was that connection so badly missed outside of Norton's work? To top that, Norton mentions in his first footnote (in the Preface) that he uses the terms "eudaimonism" (his spelling) and "self-actualization ethics" and "perfectionism" interchangeably, and that "formally and inclusively" he he employs the term "normative individualism." It just all comes together!

Norton, in characteristically beautiful style, illustrates the concept of the "daimon" by analogy to the hollow clay busts of the semi-deity Silenus fashioned by ancient Greek sculptors, which contained inside them a golden figurine to be revealed when the bust is broken open. The golden figurine is akin to our inner daimon, i.e., the inner self. Our ethical task, in short, is to bring this self to outward actuality, so that (citing the passage from the Phaedrus which Norton quotes at the very beginning, before the Preface) the inward and the outward self may be at one. I mean, already you can tell this is an awesome ethical system. This is where the virtue of integrity comes in - you act so as to harmonize the inward and outward self. The parallels to Howard Roark are obvious to anyone in the habit of drawing integrations. Going back to the title of the first chapter: self-actualization has ethical priority. It is the chief and fundamental concern of ethics, from which other ethical considerations follow. Rand again! (How did so many miss this connection, again? HOW????!!!)

Norton is careful to distinguish self-actualization from self-realization. His claim is that the inward self is real whether actualized or not. It exists as potentiality. Moreover, Norton expands upon both Aristotle and Rand by emphasizing more than just the generic human potentiality of rationality; he uses the phrase (among the many wonderful phrase-coinings in this book) "innate distinct potentiality," which is the self. Each individual has his own "unique and irreplaceable potential worth" in virtue of his unique innate nature. Dougs Rasmussen and Den Uyl would later distinguish generic and individuative potentialities, the actualization of both of which are necessary to self-actualization or eudaemonia. The normative enterprise consists, then, in self-knowledge or self-discovery and engaging in the work to progressively actualize that potentiality.

That's the basic idea, upon which the rest of the book builds. Chapters 2-4 critique "recent eudaemonisms," in turn: British Absolute Idealism, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and then the Existentialism of Sartre. I assume these chapters would be of interest to those who are reasonably well-versed in these thinkers, which admittedly I am not (for the moment, only for the moment). I do have a basic idea as to the differences between Existentialism and a Grecophile eudaemonism, namely, as to whether "existence precedes essence." Norton (and Aristotle, and Rand) affirm that we do have an essence or nature from the onset of our existence; this defines our potentialities to be actualized.

Chapter 5, titled "The Metaphysics of Individualism," is perhaps the most difficult chapter in the book; not having specialized in metaphysics, a lot of his discussion here goes over my head. (I should mention here that there's a silver lining to the difficult parts of Norton's book: it affords the opportunity to come back for subsequent readings and get something out of it. How many books can one say that about?) One very intriguing thing Norton does in this chapter is to address the meta-ethical question of goodness and "ought" in relation to natural facts. The gist of Norton's answer here consists in conceiving "ought" as potentiality in relation to actuality (thereby answering Hume, who treats fact in terms of actuality without discussing such concepts as potentiality), and in describing the basic promissory nature of human actions. (I think this latter aspect may correspond to Rand's "initial choice" upon which obligation is grounded, in connection with facts about, essentially, our potentialities.)

Chapter 6, "The Stages of Life," provides Norton's conception of the person as informed by developmental psychology, starting with childhood, then adolescence, and then maturation, and, finally, old age. There are distinctive principles of behavior applying to each stage, while the transition between stages involves what Norton refers to as "world-exchange" by the person. Childhood essentially involves dependency; the stage of adolescence is characterized by creative exploration of potentialities; maturation or adulthood is the "main phase" for which eudaemonistic principles see their application; old age is . . . well, it sounds kinda drab the way Norton describes it. I don't want to think about old age until I approach it.

Chapter 7, "Eudaimonia: The Quality of Moral Life in the Stage of Maturation," describes the condition of "living in truth to oneself," or "being where one wants to be, doing what one wants to do." That sounds like a rare phenomenon in the present-day world, but the whole point is that we all have this daimon in us that can in principle be actualized under the right conditions. Norton refers to eudaemonia as a feeling and a condition; in the first chapter, he describes it as both a feeling and condition attendant upon the satisfaction of right desire, which distinguishes it from many prevailing conceptions of happiness (though in line with the ancient Greek conception of happiness). Eudaemonia is "marked by a distinctive feeling that constitutes its intrinsic reward and therefore bears the same name as the condition itself." My favorite part of this chapter - a fascinating one, at least - is the last part, where Norton discusses the "post-mortem life." To wit:

"...It follows that the individual who is living in truth to himself is ready to die at any time. The sense of this is conveyed in a report by Abraham Maslow of his feelings upon completion of what he identifies only as an 'important' piece of work. 'I had really spent myself. This was the best I could do, and here was not only a good time to die but I was even willing to die . . . It was what David M. Levy called the "completion of the act." It was a good ending, a good close.' What follows the good close is termed by Maslow 'post-mortem life.' He says, 'I could just as easily have died so that my living constitutes a kind of extra, a bonus. It's all gravy. Therefore I might just as well live as if I had already died.' What comes next in Maslow's account sounds a new note. 'One very important aspect of the post-mortem life,' he says, 'is that everything gets doubly precious, gets piercingly important. You get stabbed by things, by flowers and by babies and by beautiful things -- just the very act of living, of walking and breathing and eating and having friends and chatting. Everything seems to look more beautiful rather than less, and one gets the much-intensified sense of miracles.'

"For myself, I cannot imagine a better evocation of the wonder that must have filled Adam in the moment when he first opened his eyes upon the world. . . .

"By the eudaimonic individual death is not feared as the 'period' by which a tragic fate cuts short the unfinished sentence. In the biography of the good life every sentence is a fitting epitaph and is the epitaph until it is succeeded by the next sentence. . . .

"Therefore to the good life death is no stranger, no alien event opposed to life, and death does not 'take us by surprise, as Sartre says, nor 'alienate us wholly in our own life.' Death is life in its consummation, and because consummation is perpetually within the well-lived life, so likewise death is within that life. The conception of death as alien to life is the product of a death-aversion which, by attempting to banish death from the sphere of life, precludes to life its consummation and its worth." (p. 239-240)

(This reminds me of Lester Burnham's final monologue in American Beauty.)

Chapter 8, "Our Knowledge of Other Persons," is also rather technical and difficult; he describes the process of "participatory enactment" in which we recognize in ourselves a world of possibilities only one of which is actualized in our own person, but this set of possibilities enables us to see those within others that are or can be actualized. I think the basic concept here is an explanation of how a self-actualizing individual recognizes and adopts a principle of universalizability, respect for persons, and taking an interest in the self-actualization of others.

This leads into chapter 9, "Social Entailments of Self-Actualization: Love and 'Congeniality of Excellences.'" Norton explains at length the distinction between love ("the aspiration to higher value"), passion, eros, and friendship, and brings up another wonderful phraseology, "diverse and complementary excellences," which is fairly self-explanatory. Chapter 10, "Intrinsic Justice and Division of Labor in Consequent Sociality" applies the social-entailment idea to the concept of justice. Here Norton brings up a principle of justice that I can't exactly describe as capitalistic, since he describes principles of justice in terms of what an individual is entitled to in virtue of his own distinctive excellence; this is presented as an alternative to the theories of justice advanced by Rawls and Nozick. Since I take the Nozickian principle to be the correct one, that has priority over what Norton says. Norton does have interesting things to say about what use a philosopher has for a sports car, though he seems to rule out that a philosopher can't also be interested in possessing sports cars. But it is plausible in the sense that philosophers, especially, aren't inclined toward seeking enrichment via material possessions such as sports cars. That idea is hardly new, and it may need modification (and certainly some kind of resolution with Rand's celebration of money-making).

Minor note: Norton uses the term "egoism" in a fairly standard sense, which is not Rand's, and rejects egoism in the standard sense as being morally inadequate. He does, however, commend the "egoistic" flavor of the ancient eudaemonists for rightly recognizing the priority of self (for which interest in others' self-actualization is an expression).

It is my hope that, in time, Personal Destinies will be mass-published and easily affordable; did I already mention that I think the world would be a better place if this book (or, say, a popularization of its ideas) were widely read? One thing's for sure: it has been a chief source of inspiration for me philosophically, as an example of how good a book can be.